And there is another reason for opening the forum ( I mean the new one) in the new tab: transferring links to postcards in the games like BINGO when you need to have both your stats and forum opened at the same time.
Menu’s item “Forum” works different way than others:
- I can click on it and it opens a community forum instead of just showing the submenu.
- Cursor is pointer, not default.
This is also so in the mobile version.
It’s a bit annoying.
Could you fix it and make it as other items: just open submenu, nothing else?
The submenus on the main website always opened on hover — no need to click. On mobile a single touch should also just open the menu and not trigger the link (at least on iOS).
Are you using keyboard navigation or some other interface that triggers the click on opening the menu?
Yes, submenu is opened on hover.
But “Forum” item works as a link at the moment. Cursor’s form points it also.
That’s right and that was done on purpose: I added the link in that position to mimic the behavior before there was a submenu for the forum(s) which is how it will also be once the submenu is removed in a couple of months. Thus, clicking on that position of the menu always leads to the Postcrossing forum: before, now and later. It’s a minor optimization but the open on hover effect doesn’t change.
Related with this, but a bit of a tangent, we are also at the moment trying to update that menu to be keyboard friendly to make the website more accessible. We are aiming that visually it stays exactly the same, but minor tweaks may be necessary, so the menu is working in progress at the moment.
I’d like to join the chorus for, once things settle down, the new forum to open in a new tab in my browser. I am doing such manually now, as I frequently need to refer back to the main site when writing a post.
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I’m wondering why the link to a Postcrossing profile opens in a new tab, if the link from the main site to the forum doesn’t?
Mainly, because I did it 2 years ago when I started working on Discourse and… haven’t though about it since. 
I had a look into this today and one main issue is that, with this type of custom links, I’m unable to enforce the forum account setting on whether to open external links on the same window or on a new one (ie: I need to choose one or the other, regardless of the setting chosen).
The current forum default (which most people go with) for all accounts is to open on a new tab, so leaving as is matches that setting most of the times.
So I’m leaning towards leaving it as is, unless many would prefer that it opens on the same tab.